It seems like everywhere I go, I hear people talking about how great it would be if Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would win the presidency because they would finally bring universal health care to America.
Despite the overwhelming support for the issue (62 percent of voters aged 19-29 and just under 50 percent for the general population), neither candidate has actually defined exactly what universal health care is.
Certainly both candidates have given heartfelt speeches about all of the poor families unable to afford health insurance because of the evil corporations. Yet, neither one has actually given the American people a clear definition beyond “affordable health care for everyone.”
This scares me for two reasons.
First, it appears that the American people are blindly supporting an issue that the candidates have not fully explained.
And second, all-inclusive health care cannot be made affordable for an entire country.
The only way we will be able to give affordable health care to every American citizen is if we allow the government to set standards on what is medically necessary. The problem with this is that patients and their doctors will no longer be able to decide how they want to treat an illness and what illnesses they want to have treated.
In many ways, this lack of choice is similar to how HMOs ran things in the 90s. To keep costs affordable for all payers, HMOs created the concept of “medical necessity.” This concept is based around the idea that only the most cost-efficient measures must be taken when handling an ailment. For instance, expensive physical therapy or chiropractic treatment may be forgone if simple home exercises are proven to be equally effective.
Furthermore, not every ailment is seen as “medically necessary” to fix. For example, head colds and other minor injuries are not seen as necessary to prescribe medicine because they statistically heal on their own.
Certainly, denying people medical attention for minor things like head colds or strained backs seems like a reasonable exchange for affordable health care; but as was demonstrated with HMOs in the 90s, “medical necessity” can also deny treatment for more serious ailments like cancer.
Because “medical necessity” is based on getting the most treatment for the least cost, only procedures that have been statistically proven to work are covered. So, cutting-edge or radical procedures are oftentimes denied.
This idea is kind of like that Denzel Washington movie “John Q,” where his health care provider denies his son an experimental heart procedure because it costs too much money. Denzel has to hold a local hospital hostage until his son finally gets the procedure. It’s a touching film. I think it won some awards, too.
However, even relatively proven procedures can be denied if a patient is a part of a certain statistical group. For example, many elderly people in the United Kingdom’s social health system have been turned down for procedures to treat diseases like prostate cancer because the “average” elderly person dies before the cancer kills them.
Even though there are healthy and active elderly people who could benefit from various treatments, because most social health systems are based on “averages” rather than individuals, the elderly are frequently denied treatment.
Although extending health care to every American seems like a good idea, by doing this, we may have to leave our personal well-being up to the government. I know Barack and Hillary seem like nice people, but allowing either one of them to decide whether or not I can get heart surgery sounds like a bad idea – primarily because Denzel is not my father.
Simon Barta is a senior English major and an assistant opinions editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.
